Lulu’s mystery message in Laughing Cavalier card

Chris Owen

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We might all be recycling our Christmas cards at the moment, but here is one which will not be thrown away.

Terry Neale discovered this 94-year-old card on top of a kitchen cupboard in his house at Emsworth Road, North End, Portsmouth.

Lulu's Christmas message to her husband

He said it was among several old framed pictures covered in years of grease and dust.

‘I cleaned them up and there were some reasonably nice prints, but nothing fantastic,’ he said.

‘Then, I found a small, old framed picture which had so much grime on the glass that it was completely obscured.

‘I scrubbed it clean and found it was a print of The Laughing Cavalier as painted by the Dutch artist Frans Hals in 1624.

‘I was interested to see if I could find out any more out about the print so took it out of the frame and was discovered it was a Christmas card which opened to reveal a message from a Lulu written to her husband in 1918.’

Terry, who has owned the property for 20 years, said no-one in his household knew anything about it and wonders if any readers might be able to identify it.